


Only A Motion Away

by Duck_Life



Series: Never Talk To Me Or My Son Ever Again [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Confused Finn, F/M, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 23:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6349333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn's not really sure what a mother is. Slowly, he learns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only A Motion Away

He hears the word when he’s thirteen years old. Nines and Zeroes are fighting— again. In the Stormtrooper ranks, all forms of touching or contact besides fighting are strictly forbidden.

They fight a lot.

“You give up?” Zeroes says, digging an elbow into Nines’ back as he presses the other cadet into the floor. “You give up yet?”

“Not on your life, motherkriffer,” Nines growls, flipping him over and pinning him to the floor. He holds him there for a good minute, Zeroes struggling with all his might but unable to get up. “Eight-Seven! Call it!”

FN-2187 glances up at the boys where they scuffle. “Oh,” he says distractedly— he’s been studying battle strategies on his datapad. “Ah, Nines wins.”

Nines laughs and then rolls off his opponent, not bothering to help him up. “You hear that motherkriffer?” he says. “I win.”

Eight-Seven frowns. “What does that word mean?”

“What?”

“You said it twice.”

Zeroes laughs as he gets up. “Come on, Eight-Seven, you don’t know what a motherkriffer is?”

“I… do,” he says slowly, feeling embarrassment boiling in the pit of his stomach. “I just… the one part of it. What—”

“Kriffer?” Nines says, a cruel smile tugging at his mouth. “Get a load of this, Eight-Seven doesn’t know what a kriffin’ kriffer is.”

“ _Yes I do_ ,” Eight-Seven says, growing more annoyed than embarrassed now. “I… what’s a mother? You said _mother_ kriffer and I _do_ know what a kriffer is but what’s a mother?”

Nines blinks. “Um,” he shrugs. “Well, you know. It’s, um…”

He glances helplessly at Zeroes, who pipes up. “It’s like a rude word for a woman,” he says. “Like, ‘oh, she’s such a mother.’”

“Are you sure?”

Nines punches him. “Of course he’s sure, Eight-Seven,” he says. “What do you know?”

Not much, he realizes. He doesn’t know much.

FN-2187 hardly ever hears the word again coming up in the ranks; he never hears it used in relation to female Stormtroopers, even when they’ve done something rude or wrong, so he starts to doubt that the definition Zeroes gave him is entirely accurate.

He works under Captain Phasma. He fears her, respects her, would never think to call her a rude word. And yet, the more he knows her the more he begins to associate her with the word “mother.”

Phasma knows all of her troopers by number and never needs to ask them or check; she just knows. She recognizes them in and out of armor and she keeps tabs on all of them, knows everything about them. If there’s a problem among the ranks, she swoops in to solve it, assigning punishments as needed.

FN-2187 never tells her, because he’s sure it would result in reconditioning at the very least, but he occasionally thinks of her as his mother. He wonders if mothers are all like her, strong and cold.

A lifetime later, he’s sitting down at a table like he’s a person, and his name is Finn. He sits between Rey and Solo and eats, and he thinks it must be the most delicious food in the galaxy. “You know,” Solo says, glancing at their host, “Maz is the closest thing I have to a grandmother.”

Maz Kanata swears at him and swats him lightly. “Like I’m young enough to be your grandmother.”

And the way she reacts leaves Finn confused, because maybe “mother” is an insult after all, just not a bad one. Something to be treated lightly.

Later, after he’s been through hell— after they _all_ have— he finally works up the nerve to look up the word on a Resistance computer. _A woman in relation to a child she has raised or given birth to_.

It only leaves him with more questions.

He asks Poe one night when they’re both up too late drinking caf, Poe to chase away the nightmares, Finn because he feels guilty for being in any way associated with the cause of Poe’s nightmares. “What was your mother like?” he asks, worrying suddenly that it’s too personal, that he should have worked up to it. He knows Poe’s parents are dead; maybe Poe doesn’t ever want to talk about it. Maybe Poe will be angry with him.

Poe just smiles wistfully and lets out a sigh. “She was the best,” he says, holding his thermos with two hands. “Kind. Strong, but soft. She was the best pilot I ever knew.” He looks at Finn. “Why?”

Finn frowns, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. “I have no memory of my mother,” he admits. _Or any mother_. That part he doesn’t disclose. He doesn’t want Poe to think he’s a freak, so removed from humanity that he has no idea what or who a mother is.

The war rages on, and Finn finds himself looking around the base for examples of mothers. Poe’s pilot friends are young and childless for the most part, but Karé Kun gets pregnant a few months after Finn meets her.

Her husband is a POW trapped somewhere with the First Order, and Finn aches for her. He ends up accompanying her to appointments, holding her hand and asking Dr. Kalonia any questions Karé might have forgotten. Karé appreciates the support and answers the timid questions Finn asks about motherhood, sounding much older than she is.

Karé’s husband is rescued two days after the baby is born, and he greets his child’s godfather with tears in his eyes and a smile on his face.

With Karé busy with her new baby, Finn starts spending time with Dr. Kalonia, directing all his questions about motherhood and what it means to her. “It’s not just biological,” she tells him, refilling a case of bacta patches, and he finds himself thinking of the way the General behaves around Poe. “Matter of fact, I never knew the woman who gave birth to me. She died soon after I was born, and then my mothers adopted me.”

Finn marvels at that— she had two mothers, and he never knew _one_. He doesn’t feel jealous or upset, just curious. Curious— and confused.

One day Kalonia tells him that if he’s going to be hanging out in medbay as much as he does he might as well be doing something useful, and she puts him to work as a nurse-in-training, cleaning linens and delivering medication and chatting with nervous patients.

He thinks about the way she’s training him, compares it to the way Phasma trained him, and finds them so different it’s difficult for him to hold both in his head. Where Phasma was cold and cruel, Kalonia is kind and careful. Where Phasma called him nothing but FN-2187, Kalonia calls him “bigshot” and “kiddo” and “superman” in addition to “Finn” and sometimes “Mr. Finn.”

He’s been thinking of Phasma as his mother, but maybe that’s not how it works. Maybe there’s a difference between training someone and raising them.

Finn is in the medbay working when Rey, Jessika, Poe, and Luke Skywalker show up with an unconscious Kylo Ren in tow. He’d known a battle was going down but he had no idea it might be this consequential.

“He needs a bed,” Luke says flatly, and Finn shakes away his surprise before showing them a clean, empty cot for their newly acquired war criminal.

It isn’t long before the General comes barreling into the room where her only son is strapped to the bed. “Where is he?” she says, sounding wild, not noticing him right in her line of vision. “There,” she answers herself, and Finn feels frozen by the window.

Before the General can reach Ren, Kalonia jumps in front of her. “General Organa, calm down.”

“No,” she says bluntly. “Wake him up, I need to talk to him. I need to…” She looks like there’s a lot more she wants to do to him than talking. Her fingers twitch toward the blaster on her hip.

“General,” Kalonia says again, more firm, but the General doesn’t stop struggling against her. “ _Leia_ ,” she says. “He’s your _son_.”

“That _monst—_ that… man is not my son,” she says, and she sounds strong and cold and Finn doesn’t know what to do.

“Well,” Kalonia says, “he’s _my_ patient. Regardless of whatever else he is or what he’s done.”

She finally manages to calm down the General and goes with her to have a cup of tea and talk. Alone in the room except for their still-unconscious patient (or prisoner… Finn’s not sure), Finn finds himself thinking about General Organa, and Kylo Ren, and a boy named Ben.

Soon enough Kylo Ren wakes up, spitting and snarling, Luke Skywalker at his side to keep the fallen Jedi in check. Finn isn’t there; he’s been avoiding medbay lately, spending his time with Rey, who tells him the whole bloody story about how they finally brought in Kylo Ren.

“Do you think things will be very different?” he asks. They’re lying in her bunk, inverted, his feet by her head and her feet by his head so they both fit, staring listlessly at the ceiling.

“There’s still a war,” she points out, but she doesn’t sound convinced. Without Ren, the First Order is bound to fall. They’re standing at the precipice of change, and Finn should feel relieved but he just feels exhausted, deflated. “Let’s talk about something else,” Rey suggests.

And, well, there’s only one other subject on Finn’s mind. “Do you remember your mother?” he asks, hoping it isn’t too personal a question.

Rey’s quiet for a long time, and then she readjusts as carefully as she can so they’re both lying the wrong way on the bed, their feet propped up on her pillow. “A little,” she says, curling around him so she doesn’t fall off. “I think I blocked a lot of it out. But she was nice. And warm. I remember feeling warm.”

Finn wraps an arm around her and thinks about that, wonders if these are true memories or if she made them up as she lay awake in the unforgiving desert, trying to sleep. He wonders if it really matters.

It’s springtime on D’Qar, and the war’s been over for years but many of those in the Resistance found themselves unable to leave, too attached to the trees and the people and the precise arrangement of the stars from the surface of the planet. Kylo Ren calls himself Ben and walks through the botanical gardens with his mother, sometimes endlessly talking with her, sometimes silent. Karé takes her daughter on picnics regularly, soaking up the sunshine and relishing the fact that her child gets to grow up in a time of renewed hope. Poe and Jessika and Luke Skywalker fly in circles overhead, carefree, lighthearted like they haven’t been in lifetimes.

Finn brushes stray strands of hair away from Rey’s sweat-soaked forehead and kisses her sweetly. “This is…” he trails off, not able to find the words.

“I know,” Rey says, crying and beaming at the same time.

Kalonia glances over at the two of them, holding a tiny squirming bundle in her arms. “Are you ready to meet your daughter?” She hands Rey the baby, whose huge eyes blink up at Finn and Rey slowly. “Have you decided on a name yet?”

“Oh,” Rey sighs, looking down at the child in her arms. “I just… I can’t think, I’m too happy. Finn, you name her.”

“Alright,” he says. “How about… May?”

“Okay, no, that’s awful,” Rey says, shaking her head, and Finn laughs. “I’m sorry, I… we’ll just think of a name later.”

“Sounds good to me,” Finn says, grinning as he looks down at the baby.

“Alright,” Kalonia says, “I’ll leave you three alone for a bit. Congratulations. And bigshot?” she adds, putting a hand on Finn’s shoulder. “Good luck.”

And then she’s gone.

Finn’s got an arm around Rey and one hand on his daughter, and he doesn’t even know how to describe how he’s feeling. It’s like nothing else in the universe. “You’re going to be a really good mother,” he says to Rey, and he watches as their baby girl wraps a tiny hand around his finger.


End file.
